Writing Clubs and Workshops – yes or no?

I recently read a very inspiring blog article on writers’ clubs ( see Mahsuda Snaith’s great post) which championed the power of work shopping prose in front of your peers. It got me thinking about my own experiences with writing groups.

I have been associated with two writing groups in my life, and what a contrast they are. They are at the poles of what a writing group can be and the functions and support that they offer the writer.

The first met on Wednesday nights at an old people’s home. Since attendance was not free, but heavily reduced for OAPs, the members consisted of two people under seventy, a group leader and a selection of the home’s residents. Most had no experience of writing creatively and were mainly interested in recording autobiographical details, enshrined either in fiction or straight memoir. Everyone said how nice everyone else’s writing was, they served tea and cakes in the interval and, although people went away massively encouraged, they got absolutely no help to improve the quality of their writing.

As useful as this might be (we all need encouragement when things are going badly), it wasn’t what I wanted. As I matured standard enter, I realised their was a huge hole in what was available to the developing writer. You see, when all the creative writing courses stop, there’s still a big gap between you and publishable standard, and – worse still – a significant improvement is required before agents and publishers might be interested in dragging you the last mile or so along the way to publication. In short, you just ain’t good enough for someone who might be able to help you to think you’re worth their effort. You’ve got to get up to a certain level before someone who is a decision maker in this industry will both to tell you what they really want, and make an investment in helping you write it.

Bridging that gap is what my second writers’ group did for me. The Leicester Writers Club was full of people who wanted to be published. They wanted other members’ help in improving their own work, and in that spirit, they set out to dissect the work of their fellow members, pointing out what worked and what didn’t, sharing experiences of what publishers and agents wanted. They never told me my work was bad, but they certainly did a lot more than tell me it was ‘nice’. Did they give me encouragement? Well, yes. But their praise was never unconditional.

Is it for everyone? Well, no. The nice tea and cakes has a perfectly valid role for writing hobbyists. Those who want to publish need support groups who hold them to a publishable standard. It’s horses for courses (and other bad clichés).

By the way, the Leicester Writers Club does have tea too, and cake on special occasions. Even ice cream has been known!